The Scandalist Scoop: Monday, Oct. 20

The biological father of Madonna’s adopted son said his boy might be “better off” with him in Malawi now that the Material Mom is headed for Splitsville. “I am still a poor farmer with nothing to offer, but maybe he would be better off back with us,” said Yohane Banda, little David Banda’s natural dad.

SAMANTHA Ronson deserves a medal for putting up with gal pal Lindsay Lohan. The two took the Acela train to Washington on Thursday and “had a quiet fight” the whole time, our spy says. Lohan spent most of the time complaining about her staff and told Ronson, “I do what’s good for you, not what’s best for both of us.” Lohan was “whining incessantly and Samantha was trying to deflect it. When Lindsay would get up, Samantha would sigh and put her sweatshirt hood back up.” At one point, it escalated to Lohan telling Ronson, “Don’t (bleeping) lie to me!”

CARRIE Fisher, who had a disastrous marriage to CAA superagent Bryan Lourd, ridicules the idea that she changed Lourd’s sexual orientation. In her hilarious memoir, “Wishful Drinking,” due in December from Simon & Schuster, Fisher says of Lourd, the father of her daughter Billie: “He told me later that I had turned him gay . . . by taking codeine again. And I said, ‘You know, I never read that warning on the label.’ I thought it said ‘heavy machinery,’ not homosexuality – turns out I could have been driving those tractors all along!'” Of her first husband, Paul Simon, who wrote “Graceland” and many other songs about her, she notes that one time, as he drove her to the airport, “I turned to him and said, ‘You’ll feel bad if I crash.’ He shrugged and said, ‘Maybe not.’ ”

SOME fans of The Who, who know of Pete Townshend’s deep spirituality, were surprised to hear “The Seeker” on the soundtrack of Bill Maher’s antireligion documentary, “Religulous.” So Page Six contacted Townshend, who replied by e-mail: “Bill Maher is a comedian. I am a songwriter. I have faith in what I would call God, but I am not a religious man. I don’t want to press my views on other people. Maher seems to have the wish to question and make fun of the sanity of we believers. I’m happy to say I’d prefer to be my kind of crazy than his kind of cynical, but . . . we live in a free society . . . Maher’s film is not an important moment in the history of religion . . . So when I first refused the use of my song (for a very modest fee by the way) and Maher badgered me, I decided to allow it. If you have problems with this film, talk to Bill Maher. If you really want to know where I am on my spiritual journey, listen to the song.”

IT looks like Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen are ready to take the plunge. Sources tell Page Six the Patriots’ quarterback and the Brazilian supermodel are planning a wedding reception at Tavern on the Green. “They were recently there, and Brady had a long chat with Broadway Joe Namath,” a spy said. Reps for Bundchen and the restaurant had no comment. Brady’s flack didn’t get back to us.

IT’S white or flight for Victoria Beckham. Posh arrived at the ME Madrid Hotel – in the city where she once lived with husband David Beckham – a few mornings ago to a room custom-arranged all in white. “She arrived with all her team from Germany in a private jet,” said our insider, “and her assistant asked that her suite have only white colors in it.” We’re told “white candles and white roses” were among the particular decorations in the fashionista’s pad.

Touring giant Live Nation doesn’t launch its new ticketing business until January, but its battle with soon-to-be rival Ticketmaster is already heating up. Shares in newly public Ticketmaster are off 39 percent since early September, when Live Nation announced it had poached the future ticketing business of venue operator SMG, one of Ticketmaster’s biggest clients after Live Nation itself.

The owner of the East Village’s famed Kim’s Video store is putting his vast collection up for sale. Facing declining revenues, Yongman Kim is making all his 55,000 films available but has imposed strict conditions. The buyer must purchase the collection in its entirety, house it in 3,000 square feet of space and allow access to those who used to rent films at the store – “charging a minimum membership fee.”

Everyone likes a nice reunion story. But when it comes to cherished groups that long ago cracked apart, there’s a considerable risk – something the classic funk-rock-harmony group Labelle knows all too well. “We were all concerned about matching such a high bar,” says the group’s main songwriter, Nona Hendryx. “And having not worked together for so long – and having grown as people and musicians – we didn’t know if we would have the same sound, or if we could match the power of what we did back then.”

Chris Martin was “just fooling around” when he punched a reporter at London’s Q Awards this month, a pal of the Coldplay frontman tells us. Martin had revealed to Paul Rees, editor of Q music mag, that he and Gwyneth Paltrow have what some married couples call a “Get out of jail card” – an all-access pass for one affair.

Bad-mortgage-embattled Ed McMahon is singing a whole new tune. As the former Carson sidekick nibbled on French fries at the Landmarc restaurant, he tapped his toe and sang along to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” which was playing in the background – and even asked for it to be played again. Big Ed was in town promoting his new TV spot for FreeCreditReport.com

Kid Sister, Kanye West’s young rapping protegée, rocking the crowd at the Sony PlayStation blowout bash at the Classic Car Club of Manhattan.

And you thought you had issues. Back when she was a college student in NYC, Gina Gershon was haunted by a heavyset, bald ghost in his underwear who would attack her while she slept. “I kept having violent nightmares,” the “Showgirls” star reveals in the Biography Channel special “Celebrity Ghost Stories,” airing next Saturday. “I would wake up with scratches and bruises.” Yikes! She isn’t alone. Former Go-Go’s lead singer Belinda Carlisle says she was also assaulted in her sleep by something from beyond the grave. “I woke up all of a sudden to this thing. It wouldn’t let me breathe; it just kept choking me. I thought I was going to die,” Carlisle says.

NEW YORK – The entertainment summit of the season – Sarah Palin and her impersonator, Tina Fey – earned “Saturday Night Live” its best ratings in 14 years. But if you blinked, you might have missed it.

ATLANTA – With the housing market in a slump, foreclosures on the rise and lenders keeping a tighter grip on mortgage money, about 2,000 interested consumers turned out Friday night to get real estate advice from … music stars.

MURRIETA, Calif. – Actor Andy Dick has plead guilty to misdemeanor drug and battery charges. Dick was ordered to serve three years of probation and wear an alcohol monitor for the next year, court records show. He avoided felony charges stemming from his arrest in mid-July after prosecutors determined Dick did not commit felony sexual battery after a teenage girl accused him of pulling her top down.

AC/DC’s old-school philosophy doesn’t stop with its bludgeoning, blues-based rock ‘n’ roll. Bucking trends since 1973, the Australian quintet remains a rare holdout in the digital marketplace by refusing to sell any of its music online. That includes Black Ice, out today. Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club have exclusive retail rights to the CD, priced at $11.88. Ice also is available at the chain websites and at acdc.com. Guitarist Angus Young has always opposed selling albums piecemeal, likening it to carving a painting into sections to gaze at van Gogh’s sky while missing the farmhouse. The Wal-Mart deal, he says, “came down to availability. There aren’t as many record stores these days, and Wal-Marts are all over America. New York and Los Angeles and Chicago may be covered, but in the heartland of America, Wal-Mart may be the only gig in town.”

Kanye West, Alicia Keys and The Fray are the latest acts confirmed to perform on the American Music Awards, joining Rihanna, Ne-Yo, Pink and others when ABC airs the show Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Annie Lennox will receive this year’s Award of Merit, determined by online voting. AMA winners will be chosen by votes cast at amavote.com (until Nov. 7) in the categories of pop/rock, country, rap/hip-hop, soul/R&B, alternative, adult contemporary, Latin and contemporary inspirational. Jimmy Kimmel will be host for the fifth time.

“Wearing a bikini on a magazine cover is my 41st birthday present to myself.” – Faith Hill on returning to her Pilates routine recently in December’s Shape, out Nov. 10. When she first took up the exercise, “I could bend in ways I haven’t been able to since I was a teenager,” says Hill, the wife of country singer Tim McGraw. She adds: “My husband loves it!”

The cellphone has become the latest medium to feed the appetite for up-to-the-second celebrity gossip. But then some, like Ms. Kardashian, might not mind so much. (In a worlds-colliding moment, she discussed her wounded foot days later on the red carpet at a party in Los Angeles for the pink BlackBerry Curve.) Said Mr. Henderson, the William Morris executive, “For those clients who want to exploit themselves, it gives them so much more opportunity.”

In Starkville, Miss., the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’ Festival celebrates the life of the American musician. “I usually don’t make a habit of making pilgrimages to a place where my father spent one night,” said Ms. Cash, who rarely appears on the Johnny Cash circuit. Although she loved her father, she says, she has no interest in having people looking through her for him.

In “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives,” on PBS’s “Nova,” a musician retraces the steps of the pioneering physicist father that he never really knew. MARK OLIVER EVERETT does not deal in reassuring platitudes, whether writing bruised and barbed confessionals as the frontman for his cult rock band, Eels, or discussing the suburban Virginia upbringing that sometimes informs them. “My father was always there,” Mr. Everett said, “in the way that the furniture was always there.”

John McCain-exalting Nashville hit maker John Rich, of the chart-topping Big & Rich, and Jerry Montano, a former bassist of the Satan-saluting Danzig, both managed to avoid arrest after getting into a fistfight early Friday. “There was an altercation and nobody desired to press charges, so no one was arrested,” Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore tells E! News Whitmore says deputies were called to the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood at 4:20 a.m., after a scuffle broke out in Rich’s room.

Whoa, Nelly. Now that’s some good secret-keeping. Canuck songbird Nelly Furtado has revealed in an interview set to air on Entertainment Tonight Canada Friday that she quietly-very quietly-tied the knot with fiancé Demacio “Demo” Castellon over the summer. “We got married July 19,” she says. “I love it. “It’s a nice phase of my life…I just feel kind of free and relaxed and more in tune with trying not to be so stressed out. I’m trying to enjoy things a little more.”

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals will play a hometown Halloween show Oct. 31 at New York’s Apollo Theatre. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Oct. 18) via Ticketmaster.

Four Tops Vocalist Levi Stubbs Dies At 72

Arguably the most powerful voice in Motown’s storied history has been silenced. Four Tops lead singer Levi Stubbs, Jr., died today (Oct. 17) at his home in Detroit after a long series io illnesses — including cancer and a stroke — that forced him to stop performing in 2000. He was 72.